don't lick the swingset
by iloveyou123
Summary: Seven different ways Sam and Freddie could turn out. "You can meet me, if you want." Seddie.


Seven different ways Sam and Freddie could turn out.

one: _sam leaves._

(of course, this is in every story: someone leaves. It is nothing, their story, if not mediocre, though he likes to think she makes it better- he is average, boring, forgotten but she shines brighter than anyone could ever hope to.)

"Sam," he says once, while they sit outside on his fire escape, "do you think you'll ever get married?"

She laughs.

"No, Fredweird. Marriage is for pussies."

There is a pause. "Why?" She asks. "Will you?" Her question is like a test- be like me or be with out me.

Freddie's never been able to be with out her.

"Probably not." His voice strains on the last word. He waits a few seconds to test the water.

"We could be not married together." He suggests.

He can feel it, right then- the words hover on the edge of his tongue. _I love you, I want you, please, say yes._

"No." She says. "I prefer to be not married alone."

Three days after that, she gets on an airplane and goes to L.A.

(she'll just be another faceless blond twenty something in a sea of faceless blond twenty somethings.)

He gets a post card once.

It says, _I wish- _but the rest is scribbled out, and he cannot read it.

*

two: _sam doesn't care._

"I'm tired of this." He says to her but not at her (it's too hard, with her long gold hair and big blue eyes and that S_amness _that she has).

"Tired of what?" She asks.

They fuck in a broom closet at Carly's wedding to Shane, Sam teases him about being Mr. Carly Shay the second and he wonders aloud if she ever got over Shane.

"This is getting old." He tells her once they finish.

Sam rolls her eyes and leans over to whisper in his ear.

"Freddie, don't you know? Nothing gets old in Never land."

He wonders if that was some bizarre put down about how he'll never get to be with her (for real), or about how neither of them ever grew up. Maybe it's about how she's like Tinkerbell (gorgeous and tiny and lights up like the sky) and how he's Peter.

Maybe she didn't mean anything by it at all. He reads too much into her.

"I love you."

(in his perfect imaginary world, there are weddings and children with his eyes and Sam's hair- in his imaginary world she kisses him like she'll never stop, plays with his hair because she likes it, not because it bothers him and in his imaginary world, she says it back.)

Here's what she says instead:

"I know."

three: _freddie doesn't care._

She kisses him when she's fourteen.

(she never gets over it.)

"Fredloser?" She asks when they sit next to each other on the fire escape. "Will you ever get over Carly?"

Freddie smiles a little at her. "Why?" He smirks. "Jealous?"

(when did he become more like her than she is?)

"You wish." She retorts quickly. "Just wondering." She says.

Sam doesn't ask again (she's afraid to know his answer).

Time flies by. Days pass and the clock tick tick ticks away. Sam languishes and lounges and simply watches as people grow and change and leave (things would be perfectly fine with out her, so she doesn't even try anymore).

"Will you marry me?"

Freddie bends at the knees and pulls out a ring and Carly cries and laughs and says yes (yes, yes, yes). Sam smirks next to them, takes larger gulps of her vodka and pretends that she isn't there.

"I'm so happy." She smiles with her mouth but not her eyes. "Really, Carly, you're the only good thing that's ever happened to him."

He rolls his eyes and hugs her anyway and pulls away (too) quickly.

"Yeah," He chuckles, "And you're the only bad thing that's ever happened to me."

She could list so many other things (crazy mom, check) but all she does is nod, because the sad thing is that he's right.

Sam closes her eyes and pictures herself in Carly's place and it's sweeter then any real memory she'll ever have.

four: _freddie leaves._

"Sometimes I wish I could be someone else." He tells her.

"Yeah," She scoffs. "Like that will ever happen."

He takes it as a challenge, she takes it as a threat.

He leaves a note for her the day before;

_you can meet me, if you want. _There's a ticket next to it.

Sam knows that it's completely against all of her rules but for a second she finds her hand reaching for the envelope.

"You never came." He accuses over the phone.

"Did you really want me to?" She asks.

He doesn't have to answer for her to know that he did, so Sam hangs up and Freddie doesn't call her again until four and a half months later.

_I can't say this in person, so I'm going to say it through card, okay? _

She reads the first line, then rips the letter up.

Let him think she didn't care, he deserves better then her and her insanity.

Freddie never comes home. Sam never goes to find him.

It's the supposedly endless cycle that ends.

_I would have waited for you, _he writes her. _I would have waited forever._

By now, Sam just throws them into the fire because she knows she will never ever write back.

five: _carly happens._

Here is the way the story goes:

Freddie loves Carly. Carly feels bad for him. Sam laughs on the sidelines and eats ham.

You don't rewrite the ending, you don't edit the dialogue- nothing. It stays exactly as it should.

Until it doesn't anymore.

"I think I like Freddie." Carly exclaims.

"Ah." Sam says and stuffs more popcorn into her mouth.

"I'm going to ask Carly to be my girlfriend." He confides to Sam while they sit outside on the fire escape, legs tangled together. She sits up.

"Really?" She asks (there is a vulnerable tone to her voice that has never been there).

"Well. Yeah." He pauses nervously. "Only if you think it's a good idea, though. Do you?"

_Say no. Stop me. Please. Before it's too late._

She rolls her eyes.

"Do whatever you want."

Here's the story now:

Carly loves Freddie. Freddie feels bad for her. Sam sits on the sidelines and eats ham.

"I love you." Carly says to Freddie.

He smiles. "I love you too."

In his mind, she is blond and beautiful and blue eyed.

But that's only in his mind.

The word love floats around at the edge of her mind, but oh well.

At least her part never changes.

six: _freddie doesn't save her_

It starts at a party.

(they always do, don't they? The really tragic stories.)

_Here, have a bit of this, oh just try that, it can't do anything to you, it's crazy man, just try it_

She thinks, what can it hurt, and tries everything.

She can't stop.

It's a simple process, addiction.

"You shouldn't be doing this, Sam!" He yells at her and tries to grab her hand.

She drunkenly pulls her hand away and shouts back,

"You can't tell me what to do, Benson!"

Freddie tries talking to her and ends up telling her the one thing he thought he never would.

"Sam, please stop. I- Sam, this is really really stupid and you're going to hate me but I've got to say it. Okay? Listen, please. I- I'm in love with you."

She laughs and laughs and laughs until there's blood pouring from her mouth and her hands are shaking and her skins turns white white white.

Freddie calls nine one one with trembling fingers and cries, "Sam, Sam, Sam, Sam." He says her name like a prayer.

"I love you, no, Sam, you can't, please, I love you I love you I love you, Sam, you can't!"

Her eyes flutter and her hands drift to his face.

"I-" She spits out blood. "I love you, too." She gurgles and chokes and gags.

He kisses her even though red flows like a waterfall from her mouth.

She doesn't move after that.

Sirens wail in the distance.

"It was my fault," he tells Carly. "It was my fault."

She tries to comfort him, but she's crying too hard by then and Freddie just leaves.

Sam dies. Because of it, Freddie dies too.

seven: _happily ever after_

It starts with a kiss on a fire escape when they're fourteen and enemies.

"I hate you," they both say but neither means it and after it, there is a change (both of them can tell).

He asks her to prom in their senior year, and he likes to think she said yes because she loved him all those years but he knows she didn't- "I like you because we're different," He tells her, "And I love you because I don't care that we are."

Sam doesn't say it back because that's not the type of person she is, but she does smirk and kiss him so hard he feels like his knees will literally turn to jelly, so there is that.

"Marry me." He asks. "Marry me, Sam, because I love you more then anyone else ever could."

He doesn't say better because he knows that she deserves so much more then him and she doesn't say yes, yes a million times yes, instead she grins and says two words,

"You wish." But she lets him hold her and she kisses his neck so he knows that what she really means is yes, she'll just never say it.

Carly cries happy tears and stands up next to Sam and Gibby stands on the other side of Freddie and winks at him while he comes down the aisle.

Spencer walks Sam up because Spencer loves Sam like she's his own little sister, and Sam kisses his cheek once he lets her go and then lifts up her dress to show him she's got light up socks on (the ones with the pineapples). Spencer cries and accidentally sets some flowers on fire and Sasha (yes, Striker, he finally called her) has to calm him down and lead him back to their seats.

Sam looks gorgeous and he can barely stop himself from running to meet her in the middle of the aisle but he contains himself and waits for her (he always is waiting for her, but he doesn't mind).

She arrives and kisses him three seconds before the priest says it's okay, but that's fine because he hears her loud and clear when she said _I do,_ and even though she didn't cry she did whisper into his ear,

"You know what I mean when I say I hate you, right?"

He laughs. "Yeah," he tells her between kisses. "I know."

Freddie tells Sam he loves her every day and she almost never says it to him at all, but that's okay because that's just who she is, and you know what?

He wouldn't have her any other way.


End file.
